In the past few years, we've seen both Honda and Yamaha keep up development of their own takes on self-balancing motorcycle technology. And although the end goal might be roughly the same between the two, each OEM has a distinctly different approach to achieving that goal.
For its part, Honda has shown both extremely serious demonstration vehicles (and videos), like this one. More recently, it's opted to put a more cuddly, kid-friendly face forward by teaming up with the Pokémon Company to create a rideable Koraidon bike. This stands in contrast to Yamaha's most recent Motoroid2 demonstrator vehicle, which veered decidedly more sci-fi in its execution.
Over the weekend, at the 2025 running of the Endurance World Championship's Suzuka 8 Hours, Honda finally did more than simply show still photos and video of Koraidon. The results? Well, see what you think after watching video of the show run during the pre-race ceremony.
Honda's social media channels posted short video clips and compelling photos from the show run, of course. My personal favorite is the video where they took Koraidon to do some wind tunnel testing, because of course they did. And I'll embed that to show you in a moment, because Honda has several social media channels and you might not catch it if you're not following the correct one (unless, of course, your particular Instagram algorithm decides to bless you today).
That's where we also learned that eventual 2025 Suzuka 8 Hours co-race-winner Johann Zarco, on break from MotoGP, was so taken with Koraidon that he couldn't resist petting it. Did it bring him the luck he needed for he and his only teammate on the weekend, Takumi Takahashi, to eventually take the race win? I mean, it clearly didn't hurt.
Now, back to that wind tunnel video, which I know you're dying to see.
From the top video, you can clearly see that Honda saw fit to make Koraidon's eyes blink at some type of interval, lending a slightly more lifelike air to the machine. The outrigger training wheels are clearly helping Koraidon to balance, and his arms and legs seem to be more ornamental than functional, which is perhaps slightly disappointing. In the video, they appear to just lightly make contact with the ground for appearance's sake more than anything else. If this were a video game, they might almost be clipping through the background.
And yet, Koraidon has a face, and seems more inherently relatable to humans than Motoroid2 does, for that reason alone. It's clear that both demonstrator vehicles were made to behave according to very specifically set programs, when and where both Honda and Yamaha chose to display their respective creations to the public.
Maybe that's also the reason that Kawasaki chose to go absolutely ham with its Corleo self-balancing robohorse. Give the robots faces and they're generally more relatable; that is, unless they're totally creepy and questionable CG like the ones out of I, Robot.
Where will Koraidon go from here? Will Honda and Toyota team up so Koraidon and Miraidon can make some appearances together? Your guess is as good as mine, but it's clear that all we're missing now is Suzuki's take on a self-balancing motorbike concept. Will it have a face, too? What do you say, Suzuki?
